Re: [school-discuss] Cost comparisons for Linux vs. Windows - retailprices

[Jon Adam <jonadam@knowhownet.net>]

Get this.  We started Giving Back Technology Foundation last week.  While 
gathering info for the business plan, we called microsoft to get the 
skinny on what we would need if we had someone that wanted windows on 
their computer.  We primarily send out redhat, some macintosh.  NO 
windows.  Microsoft wanted 95$ per computer sent out for licensing.  Here 
we are donating these computers to kids, and having these computers 
donated to us, and they wanted that much.  Sounded ridiculous to me.  I 
will say this.  The children that we have given computers to with linux on 
them, love it.  We have had a couple of tech calls, but for the most part, 
these kids are picking up linux and running these computers very well.  

Jon

On Sat, 17 Aug 2002, Leon Brooks wrote:

> On Fri, 16 Aug 2002 19:16, Matt Drew wrote:
> > Current MS licensing for this level would be Open Licensing.  You need
> > to purchase a minimum of five licenses to qualify for Open Licensing.
> > I'm assuming all Microsoft products.  I'll be using the online calculator:
> 
> > http://www.microsoft.com/education/default.asp?ID=OpenCalculator
> 
> Gotta love the retail pricing. I can't see an equivalent calculator for 
> Australian prices, so I'll convert USD -> AUD at today's rates and assume 
> parity pricing.
> 
> Office with 50 people, all requiring file sharing (one server), email (one 
> server) and an internet gateway (one server):
> 
> ITEM                              USD                 AUD
> ------------------------------- -----               -----
> File server, w2k, 50 seats       2369 (w2k+25 CALs)  4341
> +                                2090 (60 CALs)      3829
> Email server, w2k, 25 seats      2369                4341
> +                                 599 (Exch+5 CALs)  1097
> +                                 550 (45 Exch CAL)  1007
> MS-Office 2k                     7950 (x50)         14568
> Win XP Pro                       4950 (upgrade*x50)  9070
> Web server, w2k, 25 seats        2369                4341
> SQL Server                       1059 (w/10 CALs)    1940
> ------------------------------- -----               -----
> TOTAL, *not* including an ICL   24305               44534
> and/or extra 40 seats for SQL
> proxy server, virus scanner,
> or anything else not on the
> MS calculator
> ------------------------------- -----               -----
> 
> * Assumes that your workstations come with some form of Windows on them
>   that is `upgradeable' to XP Pro.
> 
> Add at least AUD$50 per PC per year for competent virus scanning.
> 
> So... which would you rather, a Microsoft Windows2000 + Exchange + IIS + 
> Office system not even set up, or a Linux + PostFix + PostgreSQL + Samba/NFS 
> + OpenOffice.org system plus 372 hours of my time at full rates (46.5 8-hour 
> working days) thrown in for free? (-:
> 
> Put another way, I could set up their whole system and spend *7*hours* 
> one-on-one with *every*single*user* getting things `just so' at 
> *full*consulting*rates* plus do the whole lot on one (duplicated, 
> replicating, failover) server without raising a sweat and still be cheaper 
> than Microsoft! And the money stays in the country, in our case, instead of 
> being exported to the 'States.
> 
> Let's come at this still another way. The *minimum* difference in software 
> licences alone would pay for a 17" LCD screen for every user (at qty 50) 
> instead of a CRT, an optical mouse instead of a ball mouse, and upping the 
> RAM in new PCs from 256MB to 512MB.
> 
> The power savings on those screens would be at least AUD$18 per working day 
> (AUD$4500 a year) for the whole office (or AUD$90PA per PC), to say nothing 
> of power savings from Linux having the CPU halted most of the time anyway. 
> Bonus, no extra charge, you would have a spare 85GHz Athlon kicking around 
> for those odd compute-intensive tasks courtesy of OpenMosix.
> 
> In terms of installation, in practice, I'd set up three kinds of machines: 
> vanilla user, power user, and server. Once each. After that, it's kickstart 
> time! You can even netboot and kickstart from there, so you could concievably 
> just plug a machine in, power it up, and if it was to be a vanilla machine 
> just walk away, no intervention necessary. If the machines were distinguished 
> by hardware (e.g. RAM size), you could also do that for the deluxe 
> workstations.
> 
> If you wanted to really bear down on hardware costs, you would eliminate 
> floppy drives, and very few machines would have CD drives (those would be 
> burners). `Vanilla' workstations could be run diskless from a pair of 
> servers, meaning you could either knock another AUD$120 off each machine for 
> disks not bought, and if you ran them Terminal Server style you could even 
> scrimp on RAM (since 32MB is plenty) but I wouldn't bother.
> 
> In large installations (hundreds of machines) it would be cost-effective to 
> run vanilla users in clusters of up to four screens on the one PC, given that 
> none of them are doing realtime 3D stuff since 
> 
> Cheers; Leon
> 

-- 
----------
Jon Adam
President
The KnowHow Network
www.knowhownet.net
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